Supply firm has chefs eating out of its hand

Updated 7:53 pm, Monday, December 24, 2012

Photo: Billy Calzada, San Antonio Express-News

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Luciano Ciociari trims a pice of prosciutto at GauchoGourmet, which imports food from Italy, Spain and South America. The business is growing every month, as they are supplying food items to many of the chefs at top restaurants all over town. less

Luciano Ciociari trims a pice of prosciutto at GauchoGourmet, which imports food from Italy, Spain and South America. The business is growing every month, as they are supplying food items to many of the chefs ... more

Aged Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale is available on the shelf at GauchoGourmet.

Aged Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale is available on the shelf at GauchoGourmet.

Photo: Billy Calzada, San Antonio Express-News

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Brothers Luciano Ciociari, left, and Juan Manuel Ciorciari, right, pose with Chef Doug Horn of Dough Pizzeria at GauchoGourmet, which imports food from Italy, Spain and South America. The business is growing every month, as they are supplying food items to many of the chefs at top restaurants all over town.

Brothers Luciano Ciociari, left, and Juan Manuel Ciorciari, right, pose with Chef Doug Horn of Dough Pizzeria at GauchoGourmet, which imports food from Italy, Spain and South America. The business is growing

The owners of a 2 1/2-year-old business called GauchoGourmet have staked their success on a concoction of rare foodstuffs, and San Antonio's chefs are gobbling it up.

Italian burrata, Calabrian peppers, 50-year-old balsamic vinegar and rare fish sauce from Vietnam — these are some of the items that chefs say set their offerings apart and keep diners coming.

As the city's restaurant scene grows more sophisticated, top chefs and some amateur foodies consistently turn to GauchoGourmet for rare goodies.

The business, which operates out of a modest warehouse, is headed by two high-energy brothers, Luciano Ciorciari, 35, and Juan Manuel Ciorciari, 38.

They're aided by their mother, Cookie, and Luciano's wife, Sylvia. A third brother, Raul, 42, who lives out of state, helps with IT matters.

GauchoGourmet has “become the backbone of what chefs are doing here,” said David Gilbert, executive chef at Sustenio restaurant at the Éilan Hotel Restaurant & Spa. “They have gone above and beyond in anything I've wanted to source, anything I wanted that's unique, and that's what we at Sustenio do. They have been over the top.”

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Stefan Bowers, chef at Feast Restaurant, said GauchoGourmet “is a hidden gem in the city,” while Doug Horn, chef and owner of Dough Pizzeria Napoletana, said his relationship with GauchoGourmet started with his purchase of tomatoes and coffee.

“Now we get hundreds of products from them,” Horn said, adding that Luciano Ciorciari “was just tenacious in looking for exactly what we needed.”

One prized item is peppers from the Calabrian region of Italy, which “dazzle people in the restaurant,” Horn said. When Horn started using the peppers, “nobody in town or even the country — except maybe in Manhattan — had them.”

Luca Della Casa, executive chef at Nosh, said the family “is more about relationships than making a dollar.

“It's the attention they put in, the quality, and that's balanced with a good price for the market.”

The support from the chefs goes both ways, Luciano said.

“The chefs were the ones who encouraged us. If it wasn't for the incredible passion for quality that our chefs have and the support of the local market, we wouldn't be here.”

The Ciorciari brothers declined to say how much sales have grown since they launched the business, but they say they're gaining new clients every month.

“People are paying a lot more attention to what they eat,” Luciano said, “and the market is demanding better food.”

A number of San Antonio chefs have garnered national attention, and “there's a lot of out-of-the-box thinking,” Luciano said.

The Ciorciari brothers are the grandsons of an Italian merchant family on one side and a food-loving Spanish family on the other.

Their grandparents immigrated to Argentina decades ago, where the brothers were reared, and they still have a special fondness for all things Argentinian. Food from Argentina, as well as Italy, Spain and France, comprise most of their stock of 500 items.

GauchoGourmet, which sells at wholesale, opened to the public in March. Home cooks “can see what the best chefs in town are using,” Luciano said.

Some bestsellers that the brothers call “everyday items” include fresh pasta from the East Coast, artisan-made breads and pepperoni, Italian ketchup, French mustards and serrano ham.

The Ciorciaris started GauchoGourmet with a single 12-cubic-foot cooler. It now has two refrigerated spaces inside a 7,000-square-foot warehouse at 935 Isom Road near International Airport.

While Juan Manuel was trained as a scientist, Luciano has roots in the restaurant and hospitality industries, serving stints in top jobs at the Watermark Hotel (now Mokara Hotel & Spa) and the Omni La Mansión del Río. During his tenure at both, it often was hard to find specialty food items, he said.

That lack of needed food items, along with their late father's founding of a precursor to GauchoGourmet, persuaded the brothers to go forward. Their father, Manuel Tomas Ciorciari, sold hard-to-find food items through the Internet, a business their mother continued after his death in 2007.

“Luciano and I are doing what Dad always wanted to do,” Juan Manuel said. “He always wanted to take it to the wholesale level.”

The Ciorciari brothers say they wish they father could have lived to see the business grow. “This is beyond his wildest dreams,” Luciano said. “We think the sky is the limit.”